Here’s the obvious endpoint for all of the hand wringing over the Google Toolbar — a broadcast flag for web pages.
First things first – we’ve just made up this meta tag. It’s actually not supported by anything yet! So why, I hear you ask, might you implement it? The answer is easy: because there should be one that programs such as the Google Toolbar listen to. People like Google aren’t going to invent one for us, their reps have practically said as much. If, as webmasters, we all start using the same one then pretty soon honourable software developers will start to use it and then, hopefully, some of the rest will follow.
The very presence of such a tag on webmaster’s pages makes a point. It says to developers such as Google “Hey! You should be paying attention to this. This is what we want. This is what we want to allow you to do here and this is what you shouldn’t”.
. . .
{restrictions} is replaced with text representing restrictions on content changing of the page. The possibilities are:
* none – the web page author requests no client side content altering
* links – the web page author requests that client side applications may only alter links or add links to the page
* content – the web page author requests that client side applications may only alter content but not modify links or produce links to other sites
* all – the web page author allows client side applications to alter anything
Thus the following requests no client side altering of the page:
You have to wonder if “none” is meant to be taken literally (and if not, why it’s an option) — should the option not to load images be unavailable in the browser if the page’s publisher sets restrictions to none? Is a serious content modification like automatic translation to be blocked? Is my favorite extension that inserts graphics after PDFs and MP3s forbidden?
Its amazing how quickly so many web publisher’s have turned into RIAA/MPAA-wannabes, locking down their wares and complaining about the users who dare to remix or modify content in their browser in ways that the user finds helpful.